Prof Dame Henrietta L. Moore & Prof Sir Charles Godfray in conversation: "Rethinking planetary prosperity: are we measuring what we value?"

Past Event

Date
 03 June 2021, 5:00pm - 6:00pm

Location
 Online - Crowdcast

Event Recording:

The recently published Dasgupta Review has made a strong call for the fundamental rebuilding of economic models in ways that inherently value Nature.

These are welcome findings, coming at a time when existing economic structures, extractive systems and patterns of consumption are eroding ecological resilience and exceeding planetary limits.

Yet the imperative for new economies that value biodiversity and ecosystem health as foundational for human wellbeing leaves us with a host of challenges and opportunities centred on how we may best build alternative economic infrastructures in inclusive and sustainable ways. This endeavour is unavoidably bound up with questions of how different communities understand social and ecological prosperity and how this should be researched and measured.

Grounded in the innovative research of the Institute for Global Prosperity at UCL, this discussion between Professor Dame Henrietta L. Moore and Professor Sir Charles Godfray takes stock of how research traditions within the social sciences that are attuned to the diversity of human livelihoods, value systems and collaborative research methods are of urgent necessity for designing new socio-natural economies and planetary prosperity for all.

Henrietta 2 1 2

Professor Dame Henrietta L. Moore
Founder and Director, Institute for Global Prosperity

Professor Henrietta L. Moore is the Founder and Director of the Institute for Global Prosperity and the Chair in Culture Philosophy and Design at University College London (UCL). A leading global thinker on prosperity, Professor Moore challenges traditional economic models of growth arguing that to flourish communities, businesses and governments need to engage with diversity and work within environmental limits. Her work crosses disciplines, from social science to the arts to business innovation and she applies these different perspectives to inform research and policy at all levels.

Her recent work addresses key issues in the public sphere where she provides commentary on topics such as Universal Basic Services, Brexit, Artificial Intelligence, displaced people and the gender pay gap as a respected leading intellectual. She retains ongoing interests on issues of globalisation, mass migration, gender, social transformation and livelihood strategies, new technologies and agroecology which have shaped her career and her engagement with policy making. She is committed to involving grassroots communities in the production of new types of knowledge through citizen science.

In 2016 Professor Moore was made Dame Commander for the British Empire for contribution to social sciences, services to business, policy and the arts. Professor Moore acted as an Advisory Panel Member for Dasgupta Review of the Economics of Biodiversity. She also serves as President of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and on the Scientific Advisory Council at DEFRA, UK Government. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an Academician of the Learned Societies for the Social Sciences, and a Member of the Institute of Directors. She is co-Chair of the London Prosperity Board, and Chair of FastForward 2030 a network and collaborative platform for businesses aiming to incorporate the Sustainable Development Goals into their business models.

Charles Godfray

Professor Sir Charles Godfray
Director, Oxford Martin School

Professor Godfray is a population biologist with broad interests in the environmental sciences and has published in fundamental and applied areas of ecology, evolution and epidemiology. He is interested in how the global food system will need to change and adapt to the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, and in particular in the concept of sustainable intensification, and the relationship between food production, ecosystem services and biodiversity. In 2017 he was knighted for services to scientific research and for scientific advice to government.

As well as leading the School, Professor Godfray is also a lead researcher of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food and the Oxford Martin Restatements project, a new approach to providing succinct summaries of scientific evidence around highly contentious topics.